The Conjuring Words

Joni Ernst, veteran juggler of pig testicles and official Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Iowa, seems to have gone very close to the full Calhoun at some gathering of hayshaking Bible-bangers back in 2013. Now, it is true that Ernst does not really come out in favor of nullification per se, but what she says is all the worse for its abject cowardice.

"You know we have talked about this at the state legislature before,
nullification. But, bottom line is, as U.S. Senator why should we be
passing laws that the states are considering nullifying? Bottom line:
our legislators at the federal level should not be passing those laws.
We're right...we've gone 200-plus years of federal legislators going
against the Tenth Amendment's states' rights. We are way overstepping
bounds as federal legislators. So, bottom line, no we should not be
passing laws as federal legislators-as senators or congressman-that the
states would even consider nullifying. Bottom line."

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Considering that at least ten states that I can think of right from jump are possessed of state legislatures batty enough to "consider" nullifying almost anything produced by the administration of the Kenyan Usurper -- Witness the bizarre refusal of a number of states to accept a decade's worth of FREE MONEY! from the Affordable Care Act -- Ernst's little tap-dance down Missionary Ridge is a distinction without a difference. This is of a piece with a lot of wingnut rhetoric these days. They put together positions made up of the conjuring words the significance of which only initiates to the cult understand -- Tenth Amendment! Nullification! Impeachment! -- and, instead of actually recommending a course of action that they know the country as a whole would find either ridiculous or insulting, they simply throw the words into the dialogue as a kind of code. (Steve M summons up William Leuchtenberg to illustrate the real-world consequences of Ernst's necromancy.) It is not speaking in code. It is political strategy by invisible ink.

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So it is that we have a number of people, many of them quite dim, who are "talking about impeachment" without actually, you know, advocating it. Rich (Sparkle Pants) Lowry thinks the president is trying to get himself impeached as a new kind of fundraising technique. So does Rep. Steve Scalise, who is some kind of big noise over in the monkeyhouse. Glenn Beck thinks very much the same thing, and says that no "serious person" he knows is actually talking about, you know, doing it. (In this, he is being fairly truthful. No serious person has been talking about impeaching the president. Only Glenn Beck was.) John McCain shakes his head sorrowfully and says the votes aren't there for it. (Someone's thought to remind him that, if the president is removed, he doesn't get the job because he was once the runner-up, right?) I'm not saying that, given a massive wave election this fall that looks increasingly unlikely, they might not try it on. But, right now, it is simply a spell you cast to summon up angry spirits.

So it is with "nullification," at least in the context presented by the juggler of pig testicles. I remember going to see a film at CPAC a couple of years back in which the history of nullification was presented without a single reference to John C. Calhoun -- which, I noted at the time, is like putting together a history of rock and roll without Chuck Berry. Instead, we heard about how the people who resisted the Fugitive Slave Act were the real nullifiers. (There was also a deliberate barbering of James Madison's thoughts on the subject.) This was an attempt on the part of the filmmakers to fit nullification -- and "state's rights" -- into a modern political context that took into account the Civil Rights movement. That this is historically idiotic didn't matter. The audience ate it up, despite the fact that I am willing to make the Toby Ziegler Bet that, if you transported that CPAC audience back to the 1850's, the Fugitive Slave Act would have passed in that hall unanimously. But, for those people in the hall, nullification was about...wait for it...freedom! Which is what always comes out of the hat. People who are not initiates see a shapeless furry blob. The initiates always see a rabbit.

This is where Ernst is. She is becoming fluent in the language of spells and incantations. The words she is saying have a private meaning unknown to those outside the cult. To her, "nullification" does not mean what it means to you and me. It doesn't mean what it meant to Calhoun or to Andy Jackson, or to Ross Barnett or George Wallace, or even to all the people whose lives were made miserable throughout history that fundamental constitutional heresy was put into practice. This includes slaves, children working in coal mines, every American under the Articles of Confederation, and every citizen of the Confederate States Of America, one way or another. But this isn't about history, either. This is about waving a rhetorical wand and hoping that nobody notices the wires and the trapdoors.

UPDATE -- Thanks to Top Commenter Doug Telling for catching my vaporlock on William Leuchtenberg's name.)